ONG  TRAIL 


SxKERMIT*  ROOSEVELT 


AUTOGRAPHED     EDITION 


THE  LONG  TRAIL 


War  dance  of  the  Kikuyus  in  honor  of  the  Great 
White  Chief   from  across  the  water. 

[Drawing   by   C.    H.    Falls,    after   a    photograph    by    the    Author] 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 


BY 
KERMIT    ROOSEVELT 


NEW  YORK 

THE  REVIEW  OF  REVIEWS 

THE  METROPOLITAN  MAGAZINE 

1921 


COPYRIGHT,  1912,  1920,  BY  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

COPYRIGHT,  1920,  1921,  BY  THE  METROPOLITAN 
PUBLICATIONS,  INC. 


NOTE 

From  Kermit  Roosevelt's  book,  "The  Happy 
Hunting-Grounds,"  published  by  Messrs.  Charles 
Scribner's  Sons,  we  are  privileged  to  print  sepa- 
rately one  chapter  under  the  title,  "The  Long 
Trail."  Mr.  Roesevelt  has  supplied  additional 
material  to  this  chapter,  which  is  published  for  the 
first  time  in  this  volume.  The  complete  contents 
of  "The  Happy  Hunting-Grounds"  are  as  follows: 

I.  The  Happy  Hunting-Grounds. 

II.  In  Quest  of  Sable  Antelope. 

III.  The  Sheep  of  the  Desert. 

IV.  After  Moose  in  New  Brunswick. 

V.     Two  Book-Hunters  in  South  Africa. 
VI.     Seth  Bullock— Sheriff  of  the  Black  Hills 
Country. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

War  dance  of  the  Kikuyus  in  honor  of  the  Great 
White  Chief  from  across  the  water    .      .     Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

Facsimile  of  a  picture  letter  by  father  ....  24 
Snapshot  of  one  of  the  famous  Long  Island  outings  56 
After  the  lion-spearing  by  the  Nandi  tribesmen  .  72 


THE  LONG  TRAIL 

THERE  is  a  universal  saying  to  the 
effect  that  it  is  when  men  are  off  in 
the  wilds  that  they  show  themselves 
as  they  really  are.  As  in  the  case  with  the 
majority  of  proverbs  there  is  much  truth 
in  it,  for  without  the  minor  comforts  of  life 
to  smooth  things  down,  and  with  even  the 
elemental  necessities  more  or  less  problem- 
atical, the  inner  man  has  an  unusual  op- 
portunity of  showing  himself — and  he  is 
not  always  attractive.  A  man  may  be  a 
pleasant  companion  when  you  always 
meet  him  clad  in  dry  clothes,  and  certain 
of  substantial  meals  at  regulated  intervals, 
but  the  same  cheery  individual  may  seem 
a  very  different  person  when  you  are  both 
on  half  rations,  eaten  cold,  and  have  been 
drenched  for  three  days — sleeping  from 
utter  exhaustion,  cramped  and  wet. 
9 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

My  father  had  done  much  hunting  with 
many  and  varied  friends.  I  have  often 
heard  him  say  of  some  one  whom  I  had 
thought  an  ideal  hunting  companion: 
"He's  a  good  fellow,  but  he  was  always 
fishing  about  in  the  pot  for  the  best  piece 
of  meat,  and  if  there  was  but  one  partridge 
shot,  he  would  try  to  roast  it  for  himself. 
If  there  was  any  delicacy  he  wanted  more 
than  his  share."  Things  assume  such  dif- 
ferent proportions  in  the  wilds ;  after  two 
months  living  on  palm-tree  tops  and  mon- 
keys, a  ten-cent  can  of  condensed  milk 
bought  for  three  dollars  from  a  rubber  ex- 
plorer far  exceeds  in  value  the  greatest 
delicacy  of  the  season  to  the  ordinary  citi- 
zen who  has  a  varied  and  sufficient  menu 
at  his  command  every  day  in  the  year. 

Even  as  small  children  father  held  us 
responsible  to  the  law  of  the  jungle.  He 
would  take  us  out  on  camping  trips  to  a 
10 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

neck  of  land  four  or  five  miles  across  the 
bay  from  home.  We  would  row  there  in 
the  afternoon,  the  boats  laden  with  blan- 
kets and  food.  Then  we  would  make  a 
driftwood  fire  on  which  to  fry  our  supper 
—usually  bacon  and  chicken.  I  do  not 
know  whether  it  was  the,  to  us,  wild  ro- 
mance of  our  position,  or  the  keen  appe- 
tite from  the  row,  but  never  since  then 
have  I  eaten  such  bacon.  Not  even  the 
smallest  child  was  allowed  to  show  a  dis- 
position to  grab,  or  select  his  pieces  of 
chicken — we  were  taught  that  that  was  an 
unpardonable  offense  out  camping,  and 
might  cause  the  culprit  to  be  left  behind 
next  time.  And  woe  to  anyone  who  in 
clumsily  walking  about  kicked  sand  into 
the  frying-pan.  After  supper  we  would 
heap  more  driftwood  on  the  fire  and  drape 
ourselves  in  our  blankets.  Then  we  would 
stretch  ourselves  out  in  the  sand  while 
11 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

father  would  tell  us  ghost  stories.  The 
smallest  of  us  lay  within  reach  of  father 
where  we  could  touch  him  if  the  story  be- 
came too  vivid  for  our  nerves  and  we 
needed  the  reassuring  feel  of  his  clothes 
to  bring  us  back  to  reality.  There  was, 
however,  a  delicious  danger  in  being  too 
near  him.  In  stories  in  which  the  "haunt" 
seized  his  victim,  father  generally  illus- 
trated the  action  by  making  a  grab  at  the 
nearest  child.  After  the  stories  were  fin- 
ished we  rolled  up  in  our  blankets  and, 
thoroughly  permeated  with  sand,  we  slept 
until  the  first  faint  light  of  dawn.  Then 
there  was  the  fire  to  be  built  up,  and  the 
breakfast  cooked,  and  the  long  row  home. 
As  we  rowed  we  chanted  a  ballad,  usually 
of  a  seafaring  nature;  it  might  be  "The 
Rhyme  of  the  Three  Sealers,"  or  "The 
Galley  Slave,"  or  "Simon  Danz."  Father 
taught  us  these  and  many  more  viva  voce, 
12 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

when  he  was  dressing  for  dinner.  A  child 
was  not  taken  along  on  these  "campings 
out"  until  he  was  six  or  seven.  They  took 
place  three  or  four  times  a  summer,  and 
continued  until  after  the  African  expedi- 
tion. By  that  time  we  were  most  of  us 
away  at  work,  scattered  far  and  wide. 

Father  always  threw  himself  into  our 
plays  and  romps  when  we  were  small  as  if 
he  were  no  older  than  ourselves,  and  with 
all  that  he  had  seen  and  done  and  gone 
through,  there  was  never  anyone  with  so 
fresh  and  enthusiastic  an  attitude.  His 
wonderful  versatility  and  his  enormous 
power  of  concentration  and  absorption 
were  unequaled.  He  could  turn  from  the 
consideration  of  the  most  grave  problems 
of  state  to  romp  with  us  children  as  if 
there  were  not  a  worry  in  the  world. 
Equally  could  he  bury  himself  in  an  ex- 
haustive treatise  on  the  History  of  the 
13 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

Mongols  or  in  the  Hound  of  the  Basker- 
villes. 

Father's  physical  successes  were  due  to 
perseverance  and  endurance.  He  was  not 
a  natural  athlete  and,  when  at  school  we 
were  surpassed  by  our  schoolmates,  he 
would  console  us  with  accounts  of  his  own 
misadventures.  Some  men  are  born  to 
excel  at  athletics,  and  the  conscientious 
plodder  can  never  rise  to  their  heights, 
but  he  can,  by  infinite  patience,  learn  to 
play  a  game  sufficiently  well  to  enjoy  it 
and  successfully  compete  with  the  ma- 
jority of  his  comrades. 

We  were  early  taught  to  ride  and  shoot, 
for  that  was  something  he  felt  that  every 
boy  should  know.  We  were  also  taught 
to  row  and  chop  down  trees  (when  we 
were  first  learning  we  used  to  do  what 
Father  called  "beaver  them  down") .  We 
none  of  us  cared  very  greatly  for  either  of 
14 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

these  latter  forms  of  exercise  and,  after 
the  first  novelty  had  worn  off,  we  kept 
them  up  mainly  because  we  loved  to  do 
anything  with  Father.  Father  had  al- 
ways cared  for  rowing.  As  a  boy  he  went 
off  alone  or  with  his  brothers  or  one  of  his 
cousins.  When  we  were  small  one  of  us 
would  be  taken  along  as  helmsman,  but  as 
soon  as  we  were  large  enough  we  learned 
to  pull  an  oar.  He  took  great  pride  in 
the  woodlands  around  Sagamore,  and 
when  he  found  some  beautiful  oak  he 
would  clear  away  the  undergrowth  and 
small  trees  that  interfered  with  it  and 
probably  cut  a  trail  to  it  from  the 
nearest  woodpath. 

We  were  taught  to  swim  when  we  were 
very  small  and  had  a  grand  time  playing 
around  the  float.  There  was  one  game 
which  was  particularly  popular.  It  was 
called  "stagecoach."  Father  sat  in  the 
15 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

middle  with  all  of  us  grouped  around  the 
edge  of  the  float.  He  began  by  telling 
each  of  us  what  part  of  the  coach  we  were ; 
one  would  be  a  wheel,  another  the  whip, 
and  so  on.  Then  Father  would  tell  a  story 
about  the  coach.  Each  child  had  to  jump 
into  the  water  when  the  part  he  repre- 
sented was  mentioned,  and  everyone 
jumped  in  when  the  word  "stagecoach" 
was  used.  Those  who  were  slow  to  jump 
or  failed  to  notice  when  their  part  oc- 
curred had  to  pay  forfeits,  which  were  de- 
cided on  after  the  play  ended,  which  was 
always  brought  about  by  the  "stagecoach" 
striking  a  rock  on  its  way  down  a  steep 
hill  and  falling  all  to  pieces  amid  confu- 
sion and  plunging  into  the  bay. 

Father  cared  for  neither  sailing  nor 
fishing,  and,  although  we  lived  always  be- 
side the  water,  and  our  cousins  and  play- 
mates were  keen  sailors  and  fishermen, 
16 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

only  one  of  us  ever  took  to  sailing,  and  but 
two  to  fishing. 

After  we  had  all  grown  up  and  gone 
out  into  the  world  we  would  try  to  gather 
at  Sagamore  for  Christmas,  and  then 
there  would  be  a  scurrying  about  to  secure 
the  sharpest  of  axes,  and  we  would  troop 
down  with  Father  in  the  snow  to  some  cor- 
ner of  the  woods  that  needed  thinning. 
Those  who  early  tired  of  the  chopping 
would,  with  the  grandchildren's  aid,  col- 
lect branches  and  deadwood  for  a  bonfire, 
and,  after  it  was  started,  Father  would 
leave  his  chopping  and  join  us  in  heaping 
on  the  brushwood. 

Until  father  sold  his  ranches  in  North 
Dakota  he  used  to  go  out  West  each  year 
for  a  month  or  so.  Unfortunately,  we 
were  none  of  us  old  enough  to  be  taken 
along,  but  we  would  wait  eagerly  for  his 
letters,  and  the  recipient  of  what  we  called 

17 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

a  picture  letter  gloried  in  the  envy  of  the 
rest  until  another  mail  placed  a  substitute 
upon  the  pedestal.  In  these  picture  let- 
ters father  would  sketch  scenes  and  inci- 
dents about  the  ranch  or  on  his  short  hunt- 
ing trips.  We  read  most  of  them  to  pieces, 
unluckily,  but  the  other  day  I  came  across 
one  of  the  non-picture  letters  that  father 
wrote  me : 

August  30,  '96. 
Out  on  the  prairie. 

I  must  send  my  little  son  a  letter  too,  for  his 
father  loves  him  very  much.  I  have  just  ridden 
into  camp  on  Muley,*  with  a  prongbuck  strapped 
behind  the  saddle;  I  was  out  six  hours  before 
shooting  it.  Then  we  all  sat  down  on  the  ground 
in  the  shade  of  the  wagon  and  had  dinner,  and  now 
I  shall  clean  my  gun,  and  then  go  and  take  a  bath 
in  a  big  pool  nearby,  where  there  is  a  large  flat 
stone  on  the  edge,  so  I  don't  have  to  get  my  feet 
muddy.  I  sleep  in  the  buffalo  hide  bag  and  I  never 
take  my  clothes  off  when  I  go  to  bed ! 

By  the  time  we  were  twelve  or  thirteen 


*  Fifteen  years  later  when  I  was  in  Medora  with 
Captain  Seth  Bullock,  Muley  was  still  alive  and  enjoying 
a  life  of  ease  in  Joe  Ferris's  pastures. 

18 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

we  were  encouraged  to  plan  hunting  trips 
in  the  West.  Father  never  had  time  to  go 
with  us,  but  we  would  be  sent  out  to  some 
friend  of  his,  like  Captain  Seth  Bullock, 
to  spend  two  or  three  weeks  in  the  Black 
Hills,  or  perhaps  we  would  go  after  duck 
and  prairie  chicken  with  Marvin  Hewitt. 
Father  would  enter  into  all  the  plans  and 
go  down  with  us  to  the  range  to  practise 
with  rifle  or  shotgun,  and  when  we  came 
back  we  would  go  over  every  detail  of  the 
trip  with  him,  reveling  in  his  praise  when 
he  felt  that  we  had  acquitted  ourselves 
well. 

Father  was  ever  careful  to  correct  state- 
ments to  the  effect  that  he  was  a  crack 
shot.  He  would  explain  how  little  being 
one  had  to  do  with  success  and  achieve- 
ment as  a  hunter.  Perseverance,  skill  in 
tracking,  quick  vision,  endurance,  stamina 
and  a  cool  head,  coupled  with  average 
19 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

ability  as  a  marksman,  produced  far 
greater  results  than  mere  skill  with  a  rifle 
—unaccompanied  to  any  marked  extent 
by  the  other  attributes.  It  was  the  sum 
of  all  these  qualities,  each  above  the  aver- 
age, but  none  emphasized  to  an  extraor- 
dinary degree,  that  accounted  for  father's 
great  success  in  the  hunting  field.  He 
would  point  out  many  an  excellent  shot  at 
a  target  who  was  of  no  use  against  game. 
Sometimes  this  would  be  due  to  lack  of 
nerve.  Father  himself  was  equally  cool 
and  rnconcerned  whether  his  quarry  was  a 
charging  lion  or  a  jack- rabbit;  with,  when 
it  came  to  the  question  of  scoring  a  hit,  the 
resultant  advantage  in  the  size  of  the  for- 
mer as  a  target.  In  other  instances  a  good 
man  at  the  range  was  not  so  good  in  the 
field  because  he  was  accustomed  to  shoot- 
ing under  conventional  and  regulated  con- 
ditions, and  fell  down  when  it  came  to 
20 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

shooting  under  disadvantageous  circum- 
stances— if  he  had  been  running  and  were 
winded,  if  he  were  hungry  or  wet,  or  tired, 
or  feeling  the  sun,  if  he  were  uncertain  of 
the  wind  or  the  range.  Sometimes,  of 
course,  a  crack  shot  possesses  all  the  other 
qualities;  such  is  the  case  with  Stewart 
Edward  White,  whom  Cuninghame  clas- 
sified as  the  best  shot  with  whom  he 
hunted  in  all  his  twenty-five  years  in 
the  wilds.  Father  shot  on  a  par  with 
Cuninghame,  and  a  good  deal  better 
than  I,  though  not  as  well  as  Tarleton. 
I  have  often  heard  father  regret  the 
fact  that  he  did  not  care  for  shooting  with 
the  shotgun.  He  pointed  out  that  it  was 
naturally  the  most  accessible  and  least  ex- 
pensive form  of  hunting.  His  eyesight 
made  it  almost  impossible  for  him  to 
attain  much  skill  with  a  shotgun,  and  al- 
though as  a  boy  and  young  man  he  went 
21 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

off  after  duck  for  sport,  in  later  years  he 
never  used  a  shotgun  except  for  collecting 
specimens  or  shooting  for  the  pot.  He 
continually  encouraged  us  to  learn  to 
shoot  with  the  gun.  In  a  letter  he  wrote 
me  to  Europe  when  I  was  off  after 
chamois  he  said:  "I  have  played  tennis 
a  little  with  both  Archie  and  Quentin,  and 
have  shot  with  the  rifle  with  Archie  and 
seen  that  he  has  practised  shotgun  shoot- 
ing with  Seaman." 

When  my  brother  and  myself  were  ten 
and  eight,  respectively,  father  took  us  and 
four  of  our  cousins  of  approximately  the 
same  ages  to  the  Great  South  Bay  for  a 
cruise,  with  some  fishing  and  bird-shoot- 
ing thrown  in,  as  the  guest  of  Regis  Post. 
It  was  a  genuine  sacrifice  on  father's  part, 
for  he  loathed  sailing,  detested  fishing  and 
was,  to  say  the  least,  lukewarm  about 
bird-shooting.  Rowing  was  the  only 
22 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

method  of  progression  by  water  for  which 
he  cared.  The  trip  was  a  great  success, 
however,  and  father  enjoyed  it  more  than 
he  anticipated,  for  with  the  help  of  our 
host  he  instructed  us  in  caring  for  our- 
selves and  our  firearms.  I  had  a  venerable 
12-bore  pin-fire  gun,  which  was  the  first 
weapon  father  ever  owned.  It  was  usually 
known  in  the  family  as  the  "rust  bore," 
because  in  the  course  of  its  eventful  career 
it  had  become  so  pitted  and  scarred  with 
rust  that  you  could  put  in  as  much  time 
as  you  wished  cleaning  and  oiling  without 
the  slightest  effect.  I  stood  in  no  little 
awe  of  the  pin-fire  because  of  its  recoil 
when  fired,  and  as  I  was  in  addition  a 
miserably  poor  shot,  my  bag  on  the  Great 
South  Bay  trip  was  not  large.  It  con- 
sisted of  one  reedbird,  which  father  with 
infinite  pains  and  determination  at  length 
succeeded  in  enabling  me  to  shoot.  I  am 
23 


THE    LONG   TRAIL 

sure  he  never  spent  more  time  and  effort 
on  the  most  difficult  stalk  after  some 
coveted  trophy  in  the  West  or  in  Africa. 
Father's  hunting  experiences  had  been 
confined  to  the  United  States,  but  he  had 
taken  especial  interest  in  reading  about 
Africa,  the  sportsman's  paradise.  When 
we  were  small  he  would  read  us  incidents 
from  the  hunting  books  of  Roualeyn  Gor- 
don Cumming,  or  Samuel  Baker,  o^ 
Drummond,  or  Baldwin.  These  we  al- 
ways referred  to  as  "I  stories,"  because 
they  were  told  in  the  first  person,  and 
when  we  were  sent  to  bed  we  would  clamor 
for  just  one  more,  a  petition  that  was 
seldom  denied.  Before  we  were  old 
enough  to  appreciate  the  adventures  we 
were  shown  tihe  pictures,  and,  through 
Cornwallis  Harris's  beautiful  colored 
prints  in  the  Portraits  of  Game  and  Wild 
Animals  of  Southern  Africa,  we  soon 
24 


V 


-  A^ 

/ 


f  k-C 


Facsimile  of  a  picture  letter  by  father. 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

learned  to  distinguish  the  great  beasts  of 
Africa.  The  younger  Gordon  Gumming 
came  to  stay  with  us  at  Sagamore,  and 
when  father  would  get  him  to  tell  us 
hunting  incidents  from  his  own  varied 
career,  we  listened  enthralled  to  a  really 
living  "I  story."  To  us  he  was  known  as 
the  "Elephant  Man,"  for  his  prowess  in 
the  pursuit  of  the  giant  pachyderm. 

Then  there  was  also  the  "Shark  Man." 
He  was  an  Australian,  who  told  us  most 
thrilling  tales  of  encounters  with  sharks 
witnessed  when  among  the  pearl-divers.  I 
remember  vividly  his  description  of  seeing 
a  shark  attack  one  of  the  natives  working 
for  him.  The  man  was  pulled  aboard  only 
after  the  shark  had  bitten  a  great  chunk 
from  his  side  and  exposed  his  heart,  which 
they  could  see  still  beating.  He  said, 
"Master,  master,  big  fish,"  before  he  died. 

The  illustrations  in  Millais's  Breath 
25 


THE    LONG   TRAIL 

from  the  Veldt  filled  us  with  delight,  and 
to  this  day  I  know  of  no  etching  that 
affects  me  as  does  the  frontispiece  by  the 
author's  father.  It  is  called  the  "Last 
Trek."  An  old  hunter  is  lying  dead  be- 
side his  ox- wagon ;  near  him  squat  two  of 
his  Kafir  boys,  and  in  the  distance  graze 
herds  of  zebra  and  hartebeeste  and  giraffe. 
Of  the  mighty  hunters  that  still  sur- 
vived at  that  time,  father  admired  most 
Mr.  F.  C.  Selous.  His  books  he  knew  al- 
most by  heart.  Whenever  Selous  came  to 
the  United  States  he  would  stay  with  us, 
and  father  would  sit  up  till  far  into  the 
night  talking  of  wild  life  in  the  open. 
Selous,  at  sixty-five,  enlisted  in  the  late 
war  as  a  private ;  he  rose  to  be  captain,  and 
was  decorated  with  the  D.  S.  O.  for  gal- 
lantry before  he  fell  fighting  the  Germans 
in  East  Africa.  No  one  could  have  de- 
vised a  more  fitting  end  for  the  gallant 
26 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

old  fellow  than  to  die  at  the  head  of  his 
men  in  a  victorious  battle  on  those  plains 
he  had  roamed  so  often  and  loved  so  well, 
fighting  against  the  worst  and  most  dan- 
gerous beast  of  his  generation. 

In  1887  father  founded  a  hunting  club 
called  the  "Boone  and  Crockett,"  after 
two  of  the  most  mighty  hunters  of 
America.  No  one  was  entitled  to  mem- 
bership who  had  not  brought  down  in 
fair  chase  three  species  of  American  big 
game.  The  membership  was  limited  to  a 
hundred,  and  I  well  remember  my  father's 
pride  when  my  brother  and  I  qualified  and 
were  eventually  elected  members.  The 
club  interests  itself  particularly  in  the  con- 
servation of  wild  life  and  the  establish- 
ment of  game  refuges.  Mr.  Selous  and 
other  English  hunters  were  among  the 
associate  members. 

In  the  summer  of  1908  my  father  told 

27 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

me  that  when  his  term  in  the  White  House 
ended  the  following  spring  he  planned  to 
make  a  trip  to  Africa,  and  that  if  I  wished 
to  do  so  I  could  accompany  him.  There 
was  no  need  to  ask  whether  I  wanted  to 
go.  At  school,  when  we  were  writing 
compositions,  mine  almost  invariably  took 
the  form  of  some  imaginary  journey 
across  the  "Dark  Continent."  Still,  father 
had  ever  made  it  a  practice  to  talk  to  us  as 
if  we  were  contemporaries.  He  would 
never  order  or  even  tell  us  to  follow  a  cer- 
tain line ;  instead,  he  discussed  it  with  us, 
and  let  us  draw  our  own  conclusions.  In 
that  way  we  felt  that,  while  we  had  his 
unreserved  backing,  we  were  yet  acting  on 
our  own  initiative  and  were  ourselves  re- 
sponsible for  the  results.  If  a  boy  is 
forced  to  do  a  thing  he  often  makes  but  a 
half-hearted  attempt  to  succeed,  and  lays 
his  failure  to  the  charge  of  the  person  who 
28 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

forced  him,  although  he  might  well  have 
come  through  with  flying  colors  had  he 
felt  that  he  was  acting  on  his  own  respon- 
sibility. In  his  discussions  with  us  father 
could,  of  course,  shape  our  opinions  in 
what  he  thought  the  proper  mould. 

In  like  manner,  when  it  came  to  taking 
me  to  Africa  father  wanted  me  to  go,  but 
he  also  wanted  me  to  thoroughly  under- 
stand the  pros  and  cons.  He  explained 
to  me  that  it  was  a  holiday  that  he  was 
allowing  himself  at  fifty,  after  a  very  busy 
life — that  if  I  went  I  would  have  to  make 
up  my  mind  that  my  holiday  was  com- 
ing at  the  beginning  of  my  life,  and 
be  prepared  to  work  doubly  hard  to 
justify  both  him  and  myself  for  having 
taken  it.  He  said  that  the  great  danger 
lay  in  my  being  unsettled,  but  he  felt  that, 
taken  rightly,  the  experience  could  be 
made  a  valuable  asset  instead  of  a  liability. 
29 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

After  we  had  once  finished  the  discussion 
and  settled  that  I  was  to  go,  father  never 
referred  to  it  again.  He  then  set  about 
preparing  for  the  expedition.  Mr.  Er 
ward  North  Buxton  was  another  African 
hunter  whom  he  greatly  admired,  and  it 
was  to  him  and  to  Selous  that  he  chiefly 
turned  for  aid  in  making  his  plans.  It  was 
often  said  of  father  that  he  was  hasty  and 
inclined  to  go  off  at  half-cock.  There  was 
never  anyone  who  was  less  so.  He  would 
gather  his  information  and  make  his  prep- 
arations with  painstaking  care,  and  then 
when  the  moment  came  to  act  he  was  thor- 
oughly equipped  and  prepared  to  do  so 
with  that  lightning  speed  that  his  enemies 
characterized  as  rash  hot-headedness. 

Father  always  claimed  that  it  was  by 
discounting  and  guarding  against  all  pos- 
sible causes  of  failure  that  he  won  his  suc- 
cesses.   His  last  great  battle,  that  for  pre- 
30 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

paredness  for  the  part  that  "America  the 
Unready"  would  have  to  play  in  the 
World  War,  was  true  to  his  life  creed. 
For  everything  he  laid  his  plans  in  ad- 
vance, foreseeing  as  far  as  was  humanly 
possible  each  contingency  to  be  encoun- 
tered. 

For  the  African  expedition  he  made 
ready  in  every  way.  I  was  at  the  time  at 
Harvard,  and  almost  every  letter  brought 
some  reference  to  preparations.  One  day 
it  would  be:  "The  Winchester  rifles  came 
out  for  trial  and  all  of  them  were  sighted 
wrong.  I  sent  them  back  with  rather  an 
acid  letter."  Then  again:  "You  and  I 
will  be  so  rusty  when  we  reach  Sir  Alfred 
Pease's  ranch  that  our  first  efforts  at 
shooting  are  certain  to  be  very  bad.  In 
March  we  will  practise  at  Oyster  Bay  with 
the  30-30  until  we  get  what  I  would  call 
the  'rifle  sense'  back  again,  and  this  will 
31 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

make  it  easier  for  us  when,  after  a  month's 
sea  trip,  we  take  up  the  business  of 
hunting." 

A  group  of  thirty  or  forty  of  the  most 
famous  zoologists  and  sportsmen  pre- 
sented my  father  with  a  heavy,  double- 
barrelled  gun.  "At  last  I  have  tried  the 
double-barrelled  Holland  Elephant  rifle. 
It  is  a  perfect  beauty  and  it  shoots  very 
accurately,  but  of  course  the  recoil  is  tre- 
mendous, and  I  fired  very  few  shots.  I 
shall  get  you  to  fire  it  two  or  three  times 
at  a  target  after  we  reach  Africa,  just  so 
that  you  shall  be  thoroughly  familiar  with 
it,  if,  or  when,  you  use  it  after  big  game. 
There  is  no  question  that  except  under 
extraordinary  circumstances  it  would  be 
the  best  weapon  for  elephant,  rhino  and 
buffalo.  I  think  the  405  Winchester  will 
be  as  good  for  everything  else. 

"About  all  my  African  things  are  ready 
32 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

now,  or  will  be  in  a  few  days.  I  suppose 
yours  are  in  good  trim  also  (a  surrepti- 
tious dig  at  a  somewhat  lackadaisical  son) . 
I  am  pursuing  my  usual  plan  of  taking 
all  the  precautions  in  advance." 

A  few  days  later  came  another  refer- 
ence to  the  Holland  &  Holland:  "The 
double-barrelled  four-fifty  shot  beauti- 
fully, but  I  was  paralyzed  at  the  direc- 
tions which  accompanied  it  to  the  effect 
that  two  shots  must  always  be  fired  in  the 
morning  before  starting,  as  otherwise  from 
the  freshly  oiled  barrels  the  first  shot 
would  go  high.  This  is  all  nonsense,  and 
I  shall  simply  have  to  see  that  the  barrels 
are  clean  of  the  oil."  The  recoil  of  the 
big  gun  was  so  severe  that  it  became  a 
standing  joke  as  to  whether  we  did  not 
fear  it  more  than  a  charging  elephant ! 

Father  gave  the  closest  attention  to 
every  detail  of  the  equipment.  The  first 
33 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

provision  lists  prepared  by  his  friends  in 
England  were  drawn  up  on  a  presidential 

f\     9 

scale  with  champagne  and  nate  de  foies 
gras  and  all  sorts  of  luxuries.  These  were 
blue-penciled  and  two  American  staples 
substituted — baked  beans  and  canned  to- 
matoes. Father  always  retained  the  ap- 
preciation of  canned  tomatoes  gained  in 
the  early  ranching  days  in  the  West.  He 
would  explain  how  delicious  he  had  found 
it  in  the  Bad  Lands  after  eating  the  toma- 
toes to  drink  the  juice  from  the  can.  In 
hunting  in  a  temperate  climate  such  as 
our  West,  a  man  can  get  along  with  but 
very  little,  and  it  is  difficult  to  realize  that 
a  certain  amount  of  luxury  is  necessary  in 
the  tropics  to  maintain  oneself  fit.  Then, 
too,  in  Africa  the  question  of  transporta- 
tion was  fairly  simple — and  almost  every- 
where we  were  able  to  keep  ourselves  and 
the  porters  amply  supplied  with  fresh 
34 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

meat.  Four  years  later,  during  the  de- 
scent of  the  Duvida — the  "River  of 
Doubt" — we  learned  to  our  bitter  cost 
what  it  meant  to  travel  in  the  tropics  as 
lightly  equipped  as  one  could,  with  but 
little  hardship  in  the  north.  It  was  not, 
however,  through  our  own  lack  of  fore- 
thought, but  due  rather  to  the  necessities 
and  shifting  chances  of  a  difficult  and  dan- 
gerous exploring  expedition. 

Even  if  it  is  true,  as  Napoleon  said,  that 
an  army  marches  on  its  belly,  still,  ft 
won't  go  far  unless  its  feet  are  properly 
shod,  and,  since  my  father  had  a  skin  as 
tender  as  a  baby's,  he  took  every  precau- 
tion that  his  boots  should  fit  him  properly 
and  not  rub.  "The  modified  duffle-bags 
came  all  right.  I  suppose  we  will  get  the 
cotton-soled  shoes,  but  I  do  not  know. 
How  do  you  like  the  rubber-soled  shoes? 
Don't  you  think  before  ordering  other 
35 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

pairs  it  would  be  as  well  to  wait  until  you 
see  the  army  shoes  here,  which  are  light 
and  somehow  Took  as  if  they  were  more  the 
kind  you  ordinarily  use  ?  How  many  pairs 
have  you  now  for  the  African  trip,  and 
how  many  more  do  you  think  you  want?" 
Father  was  fifty  years  old  in  the  Octo- 
ber before  we  left  for  Africa,  and  the 
varied  experiences  of  his  vigorous  life  had, 
as  he  used  to  say,  battered  and  chipped 
him.  One  eye  was  to  all  intents  useless 
from  the  effects  of  a  boxing  match,  and 
from  birth  he  had  been  so  astigmatic  as  to 
be  absolutely  unable  to  use  a  rifle  and 
almost  unable  to  find  his  way  in  the  woods 
without  his  glasses.  He  never  went  off 
without  eight  or  ten  pairs  so  distributed 
throughout  his  kit  as  to  minimize  the  pos- 
sibility of  being  crippled  through  any  or- 
dinary accident.  Even  so,  anyone  who 
has  worn  glasses  in  the  tropics  knows  how 
36 


THE   LONG   TRAIL 

easily  they  fog  over,  and  how  hopeless 
they  are  in  the  rains.  It  was  a  continual 
source  of  amazement  to  see  how  skilfully 
father  had  discounted  this  handicap  in 
advance  and  appeared  to  be  unhampered 
by  it. 

Another  serious  threat  lay  in  the  leg 
that  had  been  injured  when  the  carriage 
in  which  he  was  driving  was  run  down  by 
a  trolley  car,  and  the  secret  service  man 
with  him  was  killed.  In  September,  1908, 
he  wrote  me  from  Washington:  "I  have 
never  gotten  over  the  effects  of  the  trolley- 
car  accident  six  years  ago,  when,  as  you 
will  remember,  they  had  to  cut  down  to  the 
shin  bone.  The  shock  permanently  dam- 
aged the  bone  and,  if  anything  happens, 
there  is  always  a  chance  of  trouble  which 
would  be  serious.  Before  I  left  Oyster 
Bay,  while  riding,  I  got  a  rap  on  the  shin 
bone  from  a  branch.  This  was  either  the 

37 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

cause  or  the  occasion  of  an  inflammation, 
wlhich  had  grown  so  serious  when  I  got 
back  hr-e  that  Doctor  Rixey  had  to 
hastily  take  it  in  hand.  For  a  couple  of 
days  it  was  uncertain  whether  we  would 
not  have  to  have  another  operation  and 
remove  some  of  the  bones  of  the  leg,  but 
fortunately  the  doctor  got  it  in  hand  all 
right,  and  moreover  it  has  enabled  me  to 
learn  just  what  I  ought  to  do  if  I  am 
threatened  with  similar  trouble  in 
Africa." 

His  activity,  however,  was  little  ham- 
pered by  his  leg,  for  a  few  weeks  later  he 
wrote:  "I  have  done  very  little  jumping 
myself,  and  that  only  of  the  small  jumps 
up  to  four  feet,  because  it  is  evident  that 
I  have  got  to  be  pretty  careful  of  my  leg. 
and  that  an  accident  of  at  all  a  serious 
character  might  throw  me  out  of  gear  for 
the  African  trip.  This  afternoon,  by  the 
38 


THE    LONG   TRAIL 

way,  Archie  Butt  and  I  took  a  scramble 
down  Rock  Creek.  It  was  raining  and  the 
rocks  were  slippery,  and  at  one  point  I 
slipped  off  into  the  creek,  but  merely 
bruised  myself  in  entirely  safe  places,  not 
hurting  my  leg  at  all.  When  we  came  to 
the  final  and  stiffest  cliff  climb,  it  was  so 
dark  that  Archie  couldn't  get  up."  From 
which  it  may  be  seen  that  neither  endur- 
ance nor  skill  suffered  as  a  result  of  the 
accident  to  the  leg.  Still,  as  Bret  Harte 
says,  "We  always  wink  with  the  weaker 
eye,"  and  when  anything  went  WTong,  the 
leg  was  sure  to  be  implicated.  Father 
suffered  fearfully  with  it  during  the  de- 
scent of  the  River  of  Doubt.  One  of  the 
most  constant  pictures  of  father  that  I  re- 
tain is  at  Sagamore  after  dinner  on  the 
piazza.  He  would  draw  his  chair  out 
from  the  roofed-over  part  to  where  he 
could  see  the  moon  and  the  stars.  When 
39 


THE   LONG   TRAIL 

things  were  black  he  would  often  quote 
Jasper  Petulengro  in  Borrow's  Laven- 
gro:  "Life  is  sweet,  brother. 
There's  day  and  night,  brother,  both  sweet 
things;  sun,  moon,  and  stars,  all  sweet 
things ;  .  .  .  and  likewise  there's  a  wind 
on  the  heath,"  and  would  add:  "Yes, 
there's  always  the  wind  on  the  heath." 
From  where  he  sat  he  looked  across  the 
fields  to  the  dark  woods,  and  over  the  tree- 
tops  to  the  bay  with  the  changing  twin- 
kling lights  of  the  small  craft ;  across  the 
bay  to  the  string  of  lamps  along  the  cause- 
way leading  to  Centre  Island,  and  beyond 
that  again  Long  Island  Sound  with  occa- 
sionally a  "tall  Fall  Steamer  light."  For 
a  while  father  would  drink  his  coffee  in 
silence,  and  then  his  rocking-chair  would 
start  creaking  and  he  would  say :  "Do  you 
remember  that  night  in  the  Sotik  when 
the  gunbearers  were  skinning  the  big 
40 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

lion?"  or  "What  a  lovely  camp  that  was 
under  the  big  tree  in  the  Lado  when  we 
were  hunting  the  giant  eland?" 

We  get  three  sorts  and  periods  of  en- 
joyment out  of  a  hunting  trip.  The  first 
is  when  the  plans  are  being  discussed  and 
the  outfit  assembled;  this  is  the  pleasure 
of  anticipation.  The  second  is  the  enjoy- 
ment of  the  actual  trip  itself;  and  the 
third  is  the  pleasure  of  retrospection  when 
we  sit  round  a  blazing  wood  fire  and  talk 
over  the  incidents  and  adventures  of  the 
trip.  There  is  no  general  rule  to  know 
which  of  the  three  gives  the  keenest  joy. 
I  can  think  of  a  different  expedition  in 
which  each  sort  stands  out  in  pre-emi- 
nence. Even  if  the  trip  has  been  excep- 
tionally hard  and  the  luck  unusually  bad, 
the  pleasures  of  anticipation  and  prepara- 
tion cannot  be  taken  away,  and  frequently 
the  retrospect  is  the  more  satisfactory  be- 
41 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

cause  of  the  difficulties  and  discomforts 
surmounted. 

I  think  we  enjoyed  the  African  trip 
most  in  the  actuality,  and  that  is  saying  a 
great  deal.  It  was  a  wonderful  "adven- 
ture" and  all  the  world  seemed  young. 
Father  has  quoted  in  the  foreword  to 
African  Game  Trails:  "I  speak  of  Africa 
and  golden  joys."  It  was  a  line  that  I 
have  heard  him  repeat  to  himself  many 
times.  In  Africa  everything  was  new. 
He  reveled  in  the  vast  plains  blackened 
with  herds  of  grazing  antelope.  From  his 
exhaustive  reading  and  retentive  memory 
he  knew  already  the  history  and  the  habits 
of  the  different  species  of  game.  When 
we  left  camp  in  the  early  morning  we 
never  could  foretell  what  we  would  run 
into  by  nightfall — we  were  prepared  for 
anything  from  an  elephant  to  a  dik-dik — 
the  graceful  diminutive  antelope  no  larger 
42 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

than  a  hare.  In  the  evening,  after  we  had 
eaten,  we  would  gather  round  the  camp- 
fire — for  in  the  highlands  the  evenings 
were  chilly — and  each  would  tell  the  ad- 
ventures of  his  day,  and  discuss  plans 
for  the  morrow.  Then  we  would  start . 
paralleling  and  comparing.  Father 
would  illustrate  with  adventures  of 
the  old  days  in  our  West;  Cuning- 
hame  from  the  lore  gathered  during  his 
twenty  years  in  Africa  would  relate 
some  anecdote,  and  Mearns  would  talk 
of  life  among  the  wild  tribes  in  the 
Philippines. 

Colonel  Mearns  belonged  to  the  medi- 
cal corps  in  the  army.  He  had  come  with 
us  as  an  ornithologist,  for  throughout  his 
military  career  he  had  been  actively  inter- 
ested in  sending  specimens  from  wherever 
he  was  serving  to  the  Smithsonian  Na- 
tional Museum  in  Washington.  His  mild 
43 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

manner  belied  his  i  earless  and  intrepid 
disposition.  A  member  of  the  expedition 
once  came  into  camp  with  an  account  of 
the  doctor,  whom  he  had  just  run  across 
— looking  too  benevolent  for  this  world, 
engaged  in  what  our  companion  described 
as  "  slaughtering  humming-birds,  pursu- 
ing them  from  bush  to  bush."  One  of  his 
Philippine  adventures  filled  us  with  a  de- 
lighted interest  for  which  I  don't  believe 
he  fully  appreciated  the  reason.  He  told 
us  how,  with  a  small  force,  he  had  been 
hemmed  in  by  a  large  number  of  Moros. 
The  Americans  took  refuge  in  a  stockade 
on  a  hilltop.  The  Moros  advanced  time 
and  again  with  the  greatest  gallantry,  and 
Mearns  explained  how  sorry  he  felt  for 
them  as  they  fell — some  under  the  very 
walls  of  the  stockade.  In  a  musing  tone 
at  the  end  he  added:  "I  slipped  out  of  the 
stockade  that  night  and  collected  a  most 
44 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

interesting  series  of  skulls ;  they're  in  the 
Smithsonian  today." 

Father  was  the  rare  combination  of  a 
born  raconteur — with  the  gift  of  putting 
in  all  the  little  details  that  make  a  story — 
and  an  equally  good  listener.  He  was  an 
adept  at  drawing  people  out.  His  interest 
was  so  whole-hearted  and  obvious  that  the 
shyest,  most  tongue-tied  adventurer  found 
himself  speaking  with  entire  freedom. 
Everyone  with  whom  we  came  in  contact 
fell  under  the  charm.  Father  invariably 
thought  the  best  of  a  person,  and  for  that 
very  reason  everyone  was  at  his  best  with 
him — and  felt  bound  to  justify  his  confi- 
dence and  judgment.  With  him  I  always 
thought  of  the  Scotch  story  of  the  Mac- 
Gregor  who,  when  a  friend  told  him  that 
it  was  an  outrage  that  at  a  certain  ban- 
quet he  should  have  been  given  a  seat 
half-way  down  the  table,  replied :  "Where 
45 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

the  MacGregor  sits  is  the  head  of  the 
table!"  Where  father  sat  was  always  the 
head  of  the  table,  and  yet  he  treated  every- 
one with  the  same  courtesy  and  simplicity, 
whether  it  was  the  governor  of  the  Protec- 
torate or  the  poorest  Boer  settler.  I  re- 
member how  amazed  some  were  at  the  lack 
of  formality  in  his  relationship  with  the 
members  of  the  expedition.  Many  people 
who  have  held  high  positions  feel  it  in- 
cumbent on  them  to  maintain  a  certain 
distance  in  their  dealings  with  their  less 
illustrious  fellow  men.  If  they  let  down 
the  barrier  they  feel  they  would  lose  dig- 
nity. They  are  generally  right,  for  their 
superiority  is  not  innate,  but  the  result  of 
chance.  With  father  it  was  otherwise. 
The  respect  and  consideration  felt  for  him 
could  not  have  been  greater,  and  would 
certainly  not  have  been  so  sincere,  had  he 
built  a  seven-foot  barrier  about  himself. 
46 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

He  was  most  essentially  unselfish,  and 
wanted  no  more  than  would  have  been  his 
just  due  if  the  expedition,  instead  of  being 
owing  entirely  to  him,  both  financially  and 
otherwise,  had  been  planned  and  carried 
out  by  all  of  us.  He  was  a  natural  cham- 
pion of  the  cause  of  every  man,  and  not 
only  in  his  books  would  he  carefully  give 
credit  where  it  was  due,  but  he  would  en- 
deavor to  bring  about  recognition  through 
outside  channels.  Thus  he  felt  that  Co1- 
onel  Rondon  deserved  wide  acknowledg- 
ment for  the  years  of  exploring  in  the 
Brazilian  Hinterland;  and  he  brought  it 
to  the  attention  of  the  American  and 
British  Geographical  Societies.  As  a  re- 
sult, the  former  awarded  the  gold  medal  to 
Colonel  Rondon.  In  the  same  way  father 
championed  the  cause  of  the  naturalists 
who  went  with  him  on  his  expeditions.  He 
did  his  best  to  see  that  the  museums  to 

47 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

which  they  belonged  should  appreciate 
their  services  and  give  them  the  oppor- 
tunity to  follow  the  results  through. 
When  an  expedition  brings  back  material 
that  has  not  been  described,  the  museum 
publishes  pamphlets  listing  the  new  spe- 
cies, and  explaining  their  habitats  and 
characteristics.  This  is  rarely  done  by  the 
man  who  did  the  actual  collecting.  Father, 
whenever  it  was  feasible,  arranged  for 
the  naturalists  who  had  accompanied  or 
taken  part  in  the  collecting  to  have  the 
credit  of  writing  the  pamphlets  describing 
the  results  of  their  work.  To  a  layman 
this  would  not  seem  much,  but  in  reality  it 
means  a  great  deal.  Father  did  all  he 
could  to  encourage  his  companions  to 
write  their  experiences,  for  most  of  them 
had  led  eventful  lives  filled  with  unusual 
incident.  When,  as  is  often  the  case,  the 
actor  did  not  have  the  power  of  written 
48 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

narrative,  father  would  be  the  first  to  rec- 
ognize it,  and  knew  that  if  inadequately 
described,  the  most  eventful  careers  may 
be  of  no  more  interest  than  the  catalogue 
of  ships  in  the  Odyssey,  or  the  "begat" 
chapters  in  the  Bible.  If,  however,  father 
felt  that  there  existed  a  genuine  ability  to 
write,  he  would  spare  no  efforts  to  place 
the  articles;  in  some  cases  he  would  write 
introductions,  and  in  others  reviews,  of  the 
book,  if  the  results  attained  to  that  pro- 
portion. 

One  of  the  most  careful  preparations 
that  father  made  for  the  African  expedi- 
tion was  the  choosing  of  the  library.  He 
selected  as  wide  a  range  as  possible,  get- 
ting the  smallest  copy  of  each  book  that 
was  obtainable  with  decent  reading  type. 
He  wanted  a  certain  number  of  volumes 
mainly  for  the  contrast  to  the  daily  life. 
He  told  me  that  he  had  particularly  en- 
49 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

joyed  Swinburne  and  Shelley  in  ranching 
days  in  the  Bad  Lands,  because  they  were 
so  totally  foreign  to  the  life  and  the  coun- 
try— and  supplied  an  excellent  antidote  to 
the  daily  round.  Father  read  so  rapidly 
that  he  had  'to  plan  very  carefully  in 
order  to  have  enough  books  to  last  him 
through  a  trip.  He  liked  to  have  a  mix- 
ture of  serious  and  light  literature — chaff, 
as  he  called  the  latter.  When  he  had 
been  reading  histories  and  scientific  dis- 
cussions and  political  treatises  for  a  cer- 
tain length  of  time,  he  would  plunge  into 
an  orgy  of  detective  stories  and  novels 
about  people  cast  away  on  desert  islands. 
The  plans  for  the  Brazilian  expedition 
came  into  being  so  unexpectedly  that  he 
could  not  choose  his  library  with  the  usual 
care.  He  brought  Gibbon's  Decline  and 
Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  Every- 
man's edition,  and  farmed  out  a  volume  to 
50 


THE   LONG   TRAIL 

each  of  us,  and  most  satisfactory  it  proved 
to  all.  He  also  brought  Marcus  Aurelius 
and  Epictetus,  but  when  he  tried  to  read 
them  during  the  descent  of  the  Rio  da 
Duvida,  they  only  served  to  fill  him  with 
indignation  at  their  futility.  Some  trans- 
lations of  Greek  plays,  not  those  of  Gil- 
bert Murray,  for  which  he  had  unstinted 
praise,  met  with  but  little  better  success, 
and  we  were  nearly  as  badly  off  for  read- 
ing matter  as  we  were  for  provisions.  I 
had  brought  along  a  selection  of  Portu- 
guese classics  and  a  number  of  French 
novels.  The  former  were  useless  to 
father,  but  Henri  Bordeaux  and  Maurice 
Leblanc  were  grist  to  the  mill.  It  was 
father's  first  introduction  to  Arsene,  and 
he  thoroughly  enjoyed  it — he  liked  the 
style,  although  for  matter  he  preferred 
Conan  Doyle.  Father  never  cared  very 
much  about  French  novels — the  French 
51 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

books  that  he  read  most  were  scientific 
volumes — histories  of  the  Mongols — and 
an  occasional  hunting  book,  but  he  after- 
ward became  a  great  admirer  of  Henri 
Bordeaux. 

At  last  the  time  came  when  there  was 
nothing  left  but  the  Oxford  books  of 
English  and  French  verse.  The  one  of 
English  verse  he  had  always  disliked.  He 
said  that  if  there  were  to  be  any  American 
poetry  included,  it  should  be  at  any  rate 
a  good  selection.  The  choice  from  Long- 
fellow's poems  appealed  to  him  as  particu- 
larly poor,  and  I  think  that  it  was  for  this 
reason  that  he  disapproved  of  the  whole 
collection.  Be  that  as  it  may,  I  realized 
how  hard  up  for  something  to  read  father 
must  be  when  he  asked  me  for  my  Oxford 
book  of  English  verse.  For  French  verse 
father  had  never  cared.  He  said  it  didn't 
sing  sufficiently.  "The  Song  of  Roland" 
52 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

was  the  one  exception  he  granted.  It  was, 
therefore,  a  still  greater  proof  of  distress 
when  he  borrowed  the  Oxford  book  of 
French  verse.  He  always  loved  to  tell 
afterward  that  when  he  first  borrowed  it 
he  started  criticizing,  and  I  had  threat- 
ened to  take  it  away  if  he  continued  to 
assail  my  favorites.  In  spite  of  all  this 
he  found  it  infinitely  preferable  to  Epic- 
tetus  and  Marcus  Aurelius,  and,  indeed, 
became  very  fond  of  some  of  the  selections. 
Villon  and  Ronsard  particularly  inter- 
ested him. 

When  riding  along  through  the  wilder- 
ness father  would  often  repeat  poetry  to 
himself.  To  learn  a  poem  he  had  only  to 
read  it  through  a  few  times,  and  he  seemed 
never  to  forget  it.  Sometimes  we  would 
repeat  the  poem  together.  It  might  be 
parts  of  the  "Saga  of  King  Olaf,"  or  Kip- 
ling's "Rhyme  of  the  Three  Sealers,"  or 
53 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

"Grave  of  a  Hundred  Head,"  or,  per- 
haps, "The  Bell  Buoy" — or  again  it  might 
be  something  from  Swinburne  or  Shelley 
or  Keats — or  the  "Ballad  of  Judas  Isca- 
riot."  He  was  above  all  fond  of  the  poetry 
of  the  open,  and  I  think  we  children  got 
much  of  our  love  for  the  outdoor  life,  not 
only  from  actual  example,  but  from  the 
poetry  that  father  taught  us. 

There  was  an  indissoluble  bond  between 
him  and  any  of  his  old  hunting  com- 
panions, and  in  no  matter  what  part  of 
the  world  he  met  them,  all  else  was  tem- 
porarily forgotten  in  the  eager  exchange 
of  reminiscences  of  old  days.  On  the 
return  from  Africa,  Seth  Bullock,  of 
Deadwood,  met  us  in  London.  How  de- 
lighted father  was  to  see  him,  and  how  he 
enjoyed  the  captain's  comments  on  Eng- 
land and  things  English !  One  of  the  cap- 
tain's first  remarks  on  reaching  London 
54 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

was  to  the  effect  that  he  was  so  glad  to 
see  father  that  he  felt  like  hanging  his  hat 
on  the  dome  of  Saint  Paul's  and  shooting 
it  off.  We  were  reminded  of  Artemus 
Ward's  classic  reply  to  the  guard  who 
found  him  tapping,  with  his  cane,  an  in- 
scription in  Westminster  Abbey:  "Come, 
come,  sir,  you  mustn't  do  that.  It  isn't 
permitted,  you  know!"  Whereupon  Ar- 
temus Ward  turned  upon  him:  "What, 
mustn't  do  it?  If  I  like  it,  I'll  buy  it!" 
It  was  never  difficult  to  trail  the  captain. 
When  my  sister  and  I  were  going  through 
Edinburgh  Castle,  the  local  guide  showed 
us  an  ancient  gun,  firing  a  cluster  of  five 
or  six  barrels.  With  great  amusement  he 
told  us  how  an  American  to  whom  he  was 
showing  the  piece  a  few  days  previously 
had  remarked  that  to  be  shot  at  with  that 
gun  must  be  like  taking  a  shower  bath.  A 
few  questions  served  to  justify  the  con- 
55 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

elusion  we  had  immediately  formed  as  to 
the  identity  of  our  predecessor.  Father 
had  him  invited  to  the  dinner  given  by  the 
donors  of  the  Holland  &  Holland  ele- 
phant rifle. 

Of  the  hunting  comrades  of  his  early 
days,  he  told  me  that  Mr.  R.  H.  Munro 
Ferguson  was  the  most  satisfactory  of 
all,  for  he  met  all  requirements — always 
good-humored  when  things  went  wrong, 
possessing  a  keen  sense  of  humor,  under- 
standing the  value  of  silent  companion- 
ship, and  so  well  read  and  informed  as  to 
be  able  to  discuss  appreciatively  any  of 
the  multitudinous  questions  of  literature 
or  world  affairs  that  interested  my  father. 

In  Washington,  when  an  old  com- 
panion turned  up  he  would  be  trium- 
phantly borne  off  to  lunch,  to  find  himself 
surrounded  by  famous  scientists,  authors, 
senators  and  foreign  diplomats.  Father 
56 


Snapshot  taken  by  Kermit  Roosevelt  of  one  of  the 
famous  Long  Island  outings.  Reading  from  left 
to  right:  George  E.  Roosevelt,  John  K.  Roosevelt, 
Archibald  Roosevelt,  Gordon  Roosevelt,  Margaret 
Roosevelt,  Ethel  Roosevelt,  Theodore  Roosevelt,  Jr., 
Colonel  Roosevelt,  Alice  Lee  Roosevelt,  Alexander 
Russell,  Quentin  Roosevelt.  This  was  a  "squaw 
picnic,"  so  called  by  the  Roosevelt  boys  because  the 
girls  were  permitted  to  join  the  outing. 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

would  shift  with  lightning  rapidity  from 
one  to  the  other — first  he  might  be  dis- 
cussing some  question  of  Indian  policy 
and  administration,  next  the  attitude  of  a 
foreign  power — then  an  author's  latest 
novel — and  a  few  moments  later  he  would 
have  led  on  Johnny  Goff  to  telling  an  ex- 
perience with  the  cougar  hounds. 

Any  man  who  had  hunted  with  father 
was  ready  to  follow  him  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth,  and  no  passage  of  time  could  di- 
minish his  loyalty.  With  father  the  per- 
sonal equation  counted  for  so  much.  He 
was  so  whole-heartedly  interested  in  his 
companions — in  their  aspirations  and 
achievements.  In  every  detail  he  was 
keenly  interested,  and  he  would  select 
from  his  library  those  volumes  which  he 
thought  would  most  interest  each  com- 
panion, and,  perhaps,  develop  in  him  the 
love  of  the  wonderful  avocation  which  he 

57 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

himself  found  in  reading.  His  efforts 
were  not  always  crowned  with  success. 
Father  felt  that  our  African  companion, 
R.  J.  Cuninghame,  the  "Bearded  Mas- 
ter," as  the  natives  called  him,  being 
Scotch  should  be  interested  in  Scott's 
novels,  so  he  selected  from  the  "Pigskin 
Library"  a  copy  of  one  of  them — Waver- 
ly,  I  think  it  was.  For  some  weeks  Cun- 
inghame made  progress,  not  rapid,  it  is 
true,  for  he  confessed  to  finding  the  notes 
the  most  interesting  part  of  the  book ;  then 
one  day  when  they  were  sitting  under  a 
tree  together  in  a  rest  during  the  noonday 
heat,  and  father,  in  accordance  with  his 
invariable  custom,  took  out  a  book  from 
his  saddle-pocket,  R.  J.  produced  Wav- 
erly  and  started  industriously  to  work  on 
it.  Father  looked  over  his  shoulder  to  see 
where  he  had  got  to,  and,  to  his  amused 
delight,  found  that  Cuninghame  had  been 
58 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

losing  ground — he  was  three  chapters  far- 
ther back  than  he  had  been  two  weeks  be- 
fore! 

We  more  than  once  had  occasion  to 
realize  how  largely  the  setting  is  respon- 
sible for  much  that  we  enjoy  in  the  wilds. 
Father  had  told  me  of  how  he  used  to 
describe  the  bellowing  of  the  bull  elk  as  he 
would  hear  it  ring  out  in  the  frozen  still- 
ness of  the  forests  of  Wyoming.  He 
thought  of  it,  and  talked  of  it,  as  a  weird, 
romantic  call — until  one  day  when  he  was 
walking  through  the  zoological  gardens 
accompanied  by  the  very  person  to  whom 
he  had  so  often  given  the  description.  As 
they  passed  the  wapitis'  enclosure,  a  bull 
bellowed,  and  father's  illusions  and  credit 
were  simultaneously  shattered,  for  the  ro- 
mantic call  he  had  so  often  dwelt  upon 
was,  in  a  zoological  park,  nothing  more 
than  a  loud  and  discordant  sort  of  bray. 
59 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

In  spite  of  this  lesson  we  would  see 
something  among  the  natives  that  was,  in- 
teresting or  unusual  and  get  it  to  bring 
home,  only  to  find  that  it  was  the  exotic 
surroundings  that  had  been  responsible 
for  a  totally  fictitious  charm.  A  wild  hill 
tribe  in  Africa  use  anklets  made  from  the 
skin  of  the  colobus,  a  graceful,  long-haired 
monkey  colored  black  and  white.  When 
father  produced  the  anklets  at  home,  the 
only  thing  really  noticeable  about  them 
was  the  fact  that  they  smelt ! 

Another  equally  unfortunate  case  was 
the  affair  of  the  beehives.  The  same  hill 
tribe  was  very  partial  to  honey.  An  indi- 
vidual's wealth  was  computed  in  the  num- 
ber of  beehives  that  he  possessed.  They 
were  made  out  of  hollowed  logs  three 
or  four  feet  long  and  eight  or  ten  inches 
in  diameter.  A  wife  or  a  cow  was  bought 
for  an  agreed  upon  number  of  beehives, 
60 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

and  when  we  were  hunting,  no  matter  how 
hot  the  trail  might  be,  the  native  tracker 
would,  if  we  came  to  a  clearing  and  saw 
some  bees  hovering  about  the  forest  flow- 
ers, halt  and  offer  up  a  prayer  that  the 
bees  should  deposit  the  honey  in  one  of  his 
hives.  It  seemed  natural  to  bring  a  hive 
home,  but  viewed  in  the  uncompromising 
light  of  the  North  Shore  of  Long  Island 
it  was  merely  a  characterless,  uninterest- 
ing log. 

Not  the  least  of  many  delights  of  being 
a  hunting  companion  of  father's  was  his 
humor.  No  one  could  tell  a  better  story, 
whether  it  was  what  he  used  to  call  one  of 
his  "old  grouse  in  the  gunroom"  stories, 
or  an  account,  with  sidelights,  of  a  con- 
temporaneous adventure.  The  former 
had  to  do  with  incidents  in  his  early  career 
in  the  cow  camps  of  the  Dakotas,  or  later 
on  with  the  regiment  in  Cuba — and  phases 
61 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

and  incidents  of  them  soon  became  coin- 
current  in  the  expedition.  Father's  humor 
was  never  under  any  circumstances  ill- 
natured,  or  of  such  a  sort  as  might  make 
its  object  feel  uncomfortable.  If  anything 
amusing  occurred  to  a  member  of  the  ex- 
pedition, father  would  embroider  the  hap- 
pening in  inimitable  fashion,  but  always 
in  such  a  way  that  the  victim  himself  was 
the  person  most  amused.  The  accom- 
panying drawing  will  serve  as  illustration. 
Father  and  I  had  gone  out  to  get  some 
buck  to  eke  out  the  food  supply  for  the 
porters.  We  separated,  but  some  time 
later  I  caught  sight  of  father  and 
thought  I  would  join  him  and  return 
to  camp.  I  didn't  pay  particular  atten- 
tion to  what  he  was  doing,  and  as  he 
was  some  way  off  I  failed  to  notice  that 
he  was  walking  stooped  to  keep  con- 
cealed by  a  rise  of  ground  from  some 
62 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

buck  he  was  stalking.     The  result  was 
the  picture. 

Before  we  started  on  the  serious  ex- 
ploring part  of  the  Brazilian  trip,  we  paid 
visits  to  several  fazendas  or  ranches  in  the 
state  of  Matto  Grosso,  with  the  purpose 
of  hunting  jaguar,  as  well  as  the  lesser 
game  of  the  country.  One  of  the  fazendas 
at  which  we  stayed  belonged  to  the  gov- 
ernor of  the  state.  When  we  were  wak- 
ened before  daylight  to  start  off  on  the 
hunt  we  were  given  in  Brazilian  fashion, 
the  small  cup  of  black  coffee  and  piece  of 
bread  which  constitutes  the  native  Bra- 
zilian breakfast.  We  would  then  sally 
forth  to  return  to  the  ranch  not  before 
noon,  and  sometimes  much  later,  as  the 
hunting  luck  dictated.  We  would  find  an 
enormous  lunch  waiting  for  us  at  the 
house.  Father,  who  was  accustomed  to  an 
American  breakfast,  remarked  regretfully 
63 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

that  he  wished  the  lunch  were  divided,  or 
that  at  least  part  of  it  were  used  to  sup- 
plement the  black  coffee  at  daybreak.  The 
second  morning,  as  I  went  down  the  hall, 
the  dining-room  door  was  ajar,  and  I 
caught  sight  of  the  table  laden  with  the 
cold  meats  and  salads  that  were  to  serve  as 
part  of  our  elaborate  luncheon  many  dim 
hours  hence.  I  hurried  back  to  tell  father, 
and  we  tiptoed  cautiously  into  the  dining- 
room,  closing  the  door  noiselessly  behind 
us.  While  we  were  engaged  in  making 
rapid  despatch  of  a  cold  chicken,  we  heard 
our  hosts  calling,  and  the  next  minute  the 
head  of  the  house  popped  in  the  door! 
As  father  said  afterward,  we  felt  and 
looked  like  two  small  boys  caught  stealing 
jam  in  the  pantry. 

The  Brazilian  exploration  was  not  so 
carefully  planned  as  the  African  trip, 
because  father  had  not  intended  to  make 
64 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

much  of  an  expedition.  The  first  time  he 
mentioned  the  idea  was  in  April,  1913,  in 
reply  to  a  letter  I  wrote  from  Sao  Paulo 
describing  a  short  hunting  expedition  that 
I  had  made.  "The  forest  must  be  lovely; 
some  time  I  must  get  down  to  see  you,  and 
we'll  take  a  fortnight's  outing,  and  you 
shall  hunt  and  I'll  act  as  what  in  the  North 
Woods  we  used  to  call '  Wangan  man/  and 
keep  camp!" 

Four  months  later  he  wrote  that  he  was 
planning  to  come  down  and  see  me;  that 
he  had  been  asked  to  make  addresses  in 
Brazil,  Argentina,  and  Chile,  and  "I  shall 
take  a  naturalist  with  me,  if,  as  I  hope,  I 
return  via  Paraguay  and  the  Amazon." 
At  the  time  it  did  not  look  as  if  it  would 
be  possible  for  me  to  go  on  the  trip.  In 
father's  next  letter  he  said  that  after  he 
left  me,  "instead  of  returning  in  the  ordi- 
nary tourist  Bryan-Bryce-way,  I  am 
05 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

going  to  see  if  it  is  possible  to  work  across 
from  the  Plata  into  the  valley  of  the 
Amazon,  and  come  out  through  the  Bra- 
zilian forest.  This  may  not  be  possible. 
It  won't  be  anything  like  our  African  trip* 
There  will  be  no  hunting  and  no  adven- 
tures, so  that  I  shall  not  have  the  pang  I 
otherwise  would  about  not  taking  you 
along."  These  plans  were  amplified  and 
extended  a  certain  amount,  but  in  the  last 
letter  I  received  they  didn't  include  a  very 
serious  expedition. 

"I  shall  take  the  Springfield  and  the 
Fox  on  my  trip,  but  I  shall  not  expect  to 
do  any  game-shooting.  I  think  it  would 
need  the  Bwana  Merodadi,  [My  name 
among  the  natives  in  Africa]  and  not  his 
stout  and  rheumatic  elderly  parent  to  do 
hunting  in  the  Brazilian  forest.  I  shall 
have  a  couple  of  naturalists  with  me  of  the 
Heller  stamp,  and  I  shall  hope  to  get  a 
66 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

fair  collection  for  the  New  York  Museum 
— Fairfield  Osborn's  museum." 

It  was  at  Rio  that  father  first  heard  of 
the  River  of  Doubt.  Colonel  Rondon  in 
an  exploring  expedition  had  crossed  a 
large  river  and  no  one  knew  where  it  went 
to.  Father  felt  that  to  build  dugouts  and 
descend  the  river  offered  a  chance  to 
accomplish  some  genuine  and  interesting 
exploration.  It  was  more  of  a  trip  than 
he  had  planned  for,  but  the  Brazilian 
Government  arranged  for  Colonel  Ron- 
don to  make  up  an  accompanying  expedi- 
tion. 

When  father  went  off  into  the  wilds  he 
was  apt  to  be  worried  until  he  had  done 
something  which  would  in  his  mind  justify 
the  expedition  and  relieve  it  from  the 
danger  of  being  a  fiasco.  In  Africa  he 
wished  to  get  at  least  one  specimen  each 
of  the  four  great  prizes — the  lion,  the 

67 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

elephant,  the  buffalo,  and  the  rhinoceros. 
It  was  the  lion  for  which  he  was  most  keen 
— and  which  he  also  felt  was  the  most 
problematical.  Luck  was  with  us,  and  we 
had  not  been  hunting  many  days  before 
father's  ambition  was  fulfilled.  It  was 
something  that  he  had  long  desired — 
indeed  it  is  the  pinnacle  of  most  hunters' 
ambitions — so  it  was  a  happy  cavalcade 
that  rode  back  to  camp  in  the  wake  of  the 
natives  that  were  carrying  the  lioness 
slung  on  a  long  pole.  The  blacks  were 
chanting  a  native  song  of  triumph,  and 
father  was  singing  "Whack-fa-lal  for 
Lanning's  Ball,"  as  sort  of  "chant  pagan." 
Father  was  more  fluent  than  exact  in 
expressing  himself  in  foreign  languages. 
As  he  himself  said  of  his  French,  he  spoke 
it  "as  if  it  were  a  non-Aryan  tongue, 
having  neither  gender  nor  tense."  He 
would,  however,  always  manage  to  make 
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THE    LONG    TRAIL 

himself  understood,  and  never  seemed  to 
experience  any  difficulty  in  understanding 
his  interlocutor.  In  Africa  he  had  a  most 
complicated  combination  of  sign-language 
and  coined  words,  and  though  I  could 
rarely  make  out  what  he  and  his  gun- 
bearer  were  talking  about,  they  never 
appeared  to  have  any  difficulty  in  under- 
standing each  other.  Father  could  read 
Spanish,  and  he  had  not  been  in  Brazil 
long  before  he  could  make  out  the  trend 
of  any  conversation  in  Portuguese.  With 
the  Brazilians  he  always  spoke  French,  or, 
on  rare  occasions,  German. 

He  was  most  conscientious  about  his 
writing.  Almost  every  day  when  he  came 
in  from  hunting  he  would  settle  down  to 
work  on  the  articles  that  were  from  time 
to  time  sent  back  to  Scribner's.  This  daily 
task  was  far  more  onerous  than  any  one 
who  has  not  tried  it  can  imagine.  When 
69 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

you  come  in  from  a  long  day's  tramping, 
you  feel  most  disinclined  to  concentrate  on 
writing  a  careful  and  interesting  account 
of  the  day's  activities.  Father  was  invari- 
ably good-humored  about  it,  saying  that 
he  was  paying  for  his  fun.  In  Brazil 
when  the  mosquitoes  and  sand-flies  were 
intolerable,  he  used  to  be  forced  to  write 
swathed  in  a  mosquito  veil  and  with  long 
gauntlets  to  protect  hands  and  wrists. 

During  the  descent  of  the  River  of 
Doubt  in  Brazil  there  were  many  black 
moments.  It  was  impossible  to  hazard  a 
guess  within  a  month  or  more  as  to  when 
we  would  get  through  to  the  Amazon. 
We  had  dugout  canoes,  and  when  we  came 
to  serious  rapids  or  waterfalls  we  were 
forced  to  cut  a  trail  around  to  the  quiet 
water  below.  Then  we  must  make  a 
corduroy  road  with  the  trunks  of  trees 
over  which  to  haul  the  dugouts.  All  this 
70 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

took  a  long  time,  and  in  some  places  where 
the  river  ran  through  gorges  it  was  almost 
impossible.  We  lost  in  all  six  of  the  ten 
canoes  with  which  we  started,  and  of 
course  much  of  our  food-supply  and 
general  equipment.  It  was  necessary  to 
delay  and  build  two  more  canoes — a 
doubly  laborious  task  because  of  the  axes 
and  adzes  which  had  gone  down  in  the 
shipwrecks.  The  Brazil  nuts  upon  which 
we  had  been  counting  to  help  out  our 
food-supply  had  had  an  off  year.  If  this 
had  not  been  so  we  would  have  fared  by 
no  means  badly,  for  these  nuts  may  be 
ground  into  flour  or  roasted  or  prepared 
in  a  number  of  different  ways.  Another 
source  upon  which  we  counted  failed  us 
when  we  found  that  there  were  scarcely 
any  fish  in  the  river.  For  some  inexplic- 
able reason  many  of  the  tributaries  of  the 
Amazon  teem  with  fish,  while  others  flow- 

71 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

ing  through  similar  country  and  under 
parallel  conditions  contain  practically 
none.  We  went  first  onto  half  rations, 
and  then  were  forced  to  still  further 
reduce  the  issue.  We  had  only  the  clothes 
in  which  we  stood  and  were  wet  all  day 
and  slept  wet  throughout  the  night.  There 
would  be  a  heavy  downpour,  then  out 
would  come  the  sun  and  we  would  be 
steamed  dry,  only  to  be  drenched  once 
more  a  half-hour  later. 

Working  waist-deep  in  the  water  in  an 
attempt  to  dislodge  a  canoe  that  had  been 
thrown  upon  some  rocks  out  in  the  stream, 
father  slipped,  and,  of  course,  it  was  his 
weak  leg  that  suffered.  Then  he  came 
down  with  fever,  and  in  his  weakened  con- 
dition was  attacked  with  a  veritable  plague 
of  deep  abscesses.  It  can  be  readily  under- 
stood that  the  entourage  and  environment 
were  about  as  unsuitable  for  a  sick  man 
72 


r  ' 


After  the  lion-spearing  by  the  Nandi  tribesmen. 

[Drawing  by  C.   B.   Falls,   after  a    photograph   by   the  Author] 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

as  any  that  could  be  imagined.  Nothing 
but  father's  indomitable  spirit  brought 
him  through.  He  was  not  to  be  downed 
by  anything,  although  he  knew  well  that 
the  chances  were  against  his  coming  out. 
He  made  up  his  mind  that  as  long  as  he 
could,  he  would  go  along,  but  that  once 
he  could  no  longer  travel,  and  held  up  the 
expedition,  he  would  arrange  for  us  to  go 
on  without  him.  Of  course  he  did  not  at 
the  time  tell  us  this,  but  he  reasoned  that 
with  our  very  limited  supply  of  provisions, 
and  the  impossibility  of  living  on  the 
country,  if  the  expedition  halted  it  would 
not  only  be  of  no  avail  as  far  as  he  was 
concerned,  but  the  chances  would  be 
strongly  in  favor  of  no  one  coming 
through.  With  it  all  he  was  invariably 
cheerful,  and  in  the  blackest  times  ever 
ready  with  a  joke.  Sick  as  he  was,  he 
gave  no  one  any  trouble.  He  vr ould  walk 

78 


THE   LONG   TRAIL 

slowly  over  the  portages,  resting  every 
little  while,  and  when  the  fever  was  not 
too  severe  we  would,  when  we  reached 
the  farther  end  with  the  canoes,  find  him 
sitting  propped  against  a  tree  reading  a 
volume  of  Gibbon,  or  perhaps  the  Oxford 
book  of  verse. 

There  was  one  particularly  black  night ; 
one  of  our  best  men  had  been  shot  and 
killed  by  a  useless  devil  who  escaped  into 
the  jungle,  where  he  was  undoubtedly 
killed  by  the  Indians.  We  had  been  work- 
ing through  a  series  of  rapids  that  seemed 
interminable.  There  would  be  a  long 
carry,  a  mile  or  so  clear  going,  and  then 
more  rapids.  The  fever  was  high  and 
father  was  out  of  his  head.  Doctor 
Cajazeira,  who  was  one  of  the  three 
Brazilians  with  us,  divided  with  me  the 
watch  during  the  night.  The  scene  is 
vivid  before  me.  The  black  rushing  river 
74 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

with  the  great  trees  towering  high  above 
along  the  bank;  the  sodden  earth  under 
foot;  for  a  few  moments  the  stars  would 
be  shining,  and  then  the  sky  would  cloud 
over  and  the  rain  would  fall  in  torrents, 
shutting  out  sky  and  trees  and  river. 
Father  first  began  with  poetry;  over  and 
over  again  he  repeated  "In  Xanadu  did 
Kubla  Khan  a  stately  pleasure  dome 
decree,"  then  he  started  talking  at  random, 
but  gradually  he  centred  down  to  the  ques- 
tion of  supplies,  which  was,  of  course, 
occupying  every  one's  mind.  Part  of  the 
time  he  knew  that  I  was  there,  and  he 
would  then  ask  me  if  I  thought  Cherrie 
had  had  enough  to  eat  to  keep  going. 
Then  he  would  forget  my  presence  and 
keep  saying  to  himself:  "I  can't  work 
now,  so  I  don't  need  much  food,  but  he 
and  Cherrie  have  worked  all  day  with  the 
canoes,  they  must  have  part  of  mine." 
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THE   LONG   TRAIL 

Then  he  would  again  realize  my  presence 
and  question  me  as  to  just  how  much 
Cherrie  had  had.  How  good,  faithful 
Cajazeira  wake'd  I  do  not  know,  but  when 
his  watch  was  due  I  felt  him  tap  me  on 
the  shoulder,  and  crawled  into  my  soggy 
hammock  to  sleep  the  sleep  of  the  dead. 

Father's  courage  was  an  inspiration 
never  to  be  forgotten  by  any  of  us ;  with- 
out a  murmur  he  would  lie  while  Cajazeira 
lanced  and  drained  the  abscesses.  When 
we  got  down  beyond  the  rapids  the  river 
widened  so  that  instead  of  seeing  the  sun 
through  the  canyon  of  the  trees  for  but  a 
few  hours  each  day,  it  hung  above  us  all 
the  day  like  a  molten  ball  and  broiled  us 
as  if  the  river  were  a  grid  on  which  we 
were  made  fast.  To  a  sick  man  it  must 
have  been  intolerable. 

It  is  when  one  is  sick  that  one  really 
longs  for  home.  Lying  in  a  hammock  all 
76 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

unwashed  and  unshaven,  suffocating  be- 
neath a  mosquito-net,  or  tortured  by  mos- 
quitoes and  sand-flies  when  one  raises  the 
net  to  let  in  a  breath  of  air — it  is  then 
that  one  dreams  of  clean  pajamas  and  cool 
sheets  and  iced  water.  I  have  often  heard 
father  say  when  he  was  having  a  bout  of 
fever  at  home,  that  it  was  almost  a 
pleasure  to  be  ill,  particularly  when  you 
thought  of  all  the  past  discomforts  of 
fever  in  the  wilds. 

Father's  disappointment  at  not  being 
able  to  take  a  physical  part  in  the  war — 
as  he  has  said,  "to  pay  with  his  body  for 
his  soul's  desire" — was  bitter.  Strongly 
as  he  felt  about  going,  I  doubt  if  his  dis- 
appointment was  much  more  keen  than 
that  of  the  British  and  French  statesmen 
and  generals,  who  so  readily  realized  what 
his  presence  would  mean  to  the  Allied 
cause,  and  more  than  once  requested  in 

77 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

Washington  that  he  be  sent.  Marshal 
Joffre  made  such  a  request  in  person, 
meeting  with  the  usual  evasive  reply. 
Father  took  his  disappointment  as  he  had 
taken  many  another  in  his  life,  without 
letting  it  harm  his  usefulness,  or  discour- 
age his  aggressive  energy.  "In  the  fell 
clutch  of  circumstance  he  did  not  wince 
or  cry  aloud."  Indeed,  the  whole  of 
Henley's  poem  might  well  apply  to  father 
if  it  were  possible  to  eliminate  from  it 
the  unfortunate  marring  undercurrent  of 
braggadocio  with  which  father's  attitude 
was  never  for  an  instant  tinged.  With 
the  indomitable  courage  that  knew  no 
deterrent  he  continued  to  fight  his  battle 
on  this  side  to  make  America's  entry  no 
empty  action,  as  it  threatened  to  be.  He 
wrote  me  that  he  had  hoped  that  I  would 
be  with  him  in  this  greatest  adventure  of 
all,  but  that  since  it  was  not  to  be,  he 
78 


THE    LONG    TRAIL 

could  only  be  thankful  that  his  four  boys 
were  permitted  to  do  their  part  in  the 
actual  fighting. 

When  in  a  little  town  in  Germany  my 
brother  and  I  got  news  of  my  father's 
death,  there  kept  running  through  my 
head  with  monotonous  insistency  Kip- 
ling's lines: 

"He  scarce  had  need  to  doff  his  pride, 
Or  slough  the  dress  of  earth, 
E'en  as  he  trod  that  day  to  God 
So  walked  he  from  his  birth, 
In  simpleness   and  gentleness   and  honor  and 
clean  mirth." 

That  was  my  father,  to  whose  comrade- 
ship and  guidance  so  many  of  us  look 
forward  in  the  Happy  Hunting- Grounds. 


79 


A     000  025  359     1 


